Presented at LILAC 2016

1. CELEBRATING
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH
AT YORK UNIVERSITY
Insights into Students’ IL Skills &
Future Directions for Instruction

2. AGENDA
1. What & How
□ Activity: How do you celebrate Undergraduate
Research (UR)?
2. IL Abilities: What did we learn?
3. Looking forward
□ Activity: ACRL IL Framework and IL Award
Questions

3. 1. UNDERGRADUATE
RESEARCH FAIR
What is it?
How did we do it?

4. OUR JOURNEY
IL
Award
Student
eJournal
UR Fair

5. DEMOGRAPHICS
Social Sciences
Humanities
Health
Sciences
Environmental Studies
Fine Arts
THE FAIR AT A GLANCE
GENERAL INFO
Applications : Accepted
(2:1 @ A or higher)
Mostly upper level,
although…
The number of IL
applications is increasing

6. 4400$That’s a lot of award money
100%Total success!
~57 participants
7+ awards
And a lot more faculty, family, and friends
2016

7. WHY CELEBRATE UR?
○ Strategic priority
○ Institutional profile
○ Profiles library role
○ Experiential education
○ Students’ writing, presentation and IL skills
○ Scholarly publication and dissemination
○ Career goals and/or graduate school
○ Growing trend in higher education
(Jones & Canuel, 2013; Hensley, Shreeves & Davis-Kahl, 2014)

8. BONNET ET AL.
Contributes unique
findings to what is known
about the apprentice
undergraduate researcher.
MAIN STUDIES
ERIAL / PIL
Studies
Studied undergraduate
students at large.

9. ERIAL / PIL
Undergraduate students are:
○ Digital natives
○ Pragmatic and self sufficient
○ Rarely use new sources
○ Lack Boolean understanding
○ Seek faculty help
○ Rarely seek librarians’ help

10. BONNET ET AL.
Apprentice undergraduate researchers are:
○ Not just about grades
○ Invested in research
○ Use wide range of sources and tools
○ Ability to critically evaluate sources
○ Rely on librarians’ research help

11. HOW DO YOU
CELEBRATE UR?
Activity 1:
On a sticky note write your institution
and how you celebrate undergraduate
research?

12. ACTIVITY 1: HOW DO YOU
CELEBRATE UR?

13. 2. IL ABILITIES
What did we learn from our study?

14. RESEARCH
QUESTIONS

15. PRIMARY GOALS
To investigate high achieving students’ IL
skills:
○ strengths
○ gaps
○ similarities to other studies
○ IL and reference help significance

16. IL AWARD QUESTIONS
Identify
Describe strategies that
you used to search for
relevant resources for
this research project.
For example, outline why
you chose specific
databases or other search
tools/engines available at
the library or beyond it,
provide examples of
keyword searches used, and
approaches you applied to
develop or refine your
search strategies as your
research progressed etc.
Please be as detailed as
possible.
Evaluate
Describe strategies that
you used to select the
relevant types of
resources for this
research project and
explain how this may
have influenced your
decision to use them.
(i.e. relevance, currency,
authority, purpose/point of
view, scholarly vs. popular,
peer-reviewed, primary vs.
secondary sources etc.).
Services
How did you use library
services and/or library
resources for this
research project?
(i.e. Did you consult with a
librarian or archivist? Did
you use the library catalogue
to find your resources? Did
you use virtual library help?
Did you attend library drop-
in sessions or library classes?
Did you use
LibGuides/Research Guides?
What new library services
and /or resources did you
learn about in conducting
this research project?)

17. “
I used Google Scholar for articles I could
not retrieve easily from York’s databases.
HOW STUDENTS SEARCHED

18. Students seldom demonstrate that they
understand Boolean.
KEYWORDS & BOOLEAN

19. Students’ ability to critically think about information
is evident. Students are influenced by the fact that
assignments call for scholarly sources
(Ganley, Gilbert, & Rosario, 2013).
CRITICAL THINKING ABOUT
INFORMATION SOURCES

20. Students ability to think critically
about information is evident.
CRITICAL THINKING ABOUT
INFORMATION SOURCES

21. “As a first year student, I was very confused on how to use
library services. My professor arranged a session where a
library representative came to one class to lecture us on
research skills...I believe this session was extremely important
to me as I felt I could tackle the research paper easily.
LIBRARY ROLE IN HELPING
WITH RESEARCH

22. ROLE OF IL
Did IL and/or research help play a
significant role in terms of students’
performance on IL award submissions?

23. CHI SQUARE TEST
Ranking
Yes
IL/Reference Help
No
IL/Reference Help
Good 31 8
Average 22 14
Poor 7 11
TOTAL 60 33
p = 0.01

24. SUMMARY OF OUR FINDINGS
Strengths Gaps
In Common With
Other Studies
Rarely use new sources PIL/ERIAL
Self-sufficient PIL/ERIAL
Seldom demonstrate
Boolean and subject
heading understanding
PIL/ERIAL
(Head, 2010; Duke & Asher,
2012; Kolowich, 2011)
Seek library help Bonnet et al., 2013
Ability to critically
evaluate
Bonnet et al., 2013; Ganley,
Gilbert, & Rosario, 2013
Lack understanding of
publisher role Jones & Canuel, 2013

25. 3. LOOKING FORWARD
Future implications

26. IMPLICATIONS FOR
INSTRUCTION
○ Avoid library jargon (i.e. library catalogue)
○ Discovery Layer
○ Flipped classrooms
○ Librarian reference and IL is beneficial
○ Intentional integration of IL threshold
concepts
○ Embedded librarians to foster higher order IL
skills

27. ACRL IL
FRAMEWORK
Information literacy is the set of integrated abilities
encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the
understanding of how information is produced and valued,
and the use of information in creating new knowledge and
participating ethically in communities of learning.

28. THRESHOLD CONCEPTS
Authority Is Constructed and Contextual
Information Creation as a Process
Information Has Value
Research as Inquiry
Scholarship as Conversation
Searching as Strategic Exploration
(Souce: http://silenceandvoice.com/)

29. “
...I accessed tools like the “Oxford Dictionary of National Biography” to find
background information on important authors of travel handbooks...
I quickly discovered, though, that
these databases were more
suitable for natural sciences
students, and that I was looking at
the politics of the environment,
not the science of it.
...I critically analyzed my
primary sources to create my
own argument, and contrast it
to what other scholars had said
earlier...I needed to critically
analyze a variety of different
texts, so that I could hear
different voices and
perspectives.
...many authors also mentioned important books Victorians
would use when they travelled...This intrigued me and I
started looking for the actual sources mentioned by the
secondary source authors.
AWARD WINNERS ABILITIES
RELATIVE TO THRESHOLD
CONCEPTS
Information Creation as Process
Authority is constructed and
contextual/Scholarship as
conversation
Research as Inquiry
Searching as strategic
exploration

30. IL AWARD
QUESTIONS
Activity 2:
Thinking about the ACRL IL
Framework, what questions would you
develop for an IL Award?

31. CONCLUSION
Celebrating UR
We heard from you and you heard
from us on how we celebrate
undergraduate research. In our
experience collaboration is key!
Research Questions
We took a closer look at high
achieving students IL abilities and
the implication for instruction.
Role of IL
Is IL instruction on target? Yes,
according to our research, IL
instruction and reference is
making a difference to students’ IL
abilities. Librarians should focus
on targeted and strategic teaching
IL Framework
We looked closer at the IL abilities
of award winners relative to the
ACRL IL Framework and its
constituent threshold concepts.
Library has a role with developing
IL skills as a discipline in itself.
IL Award Questions
We asked you to think about the
threshold concepts while
developing IL Award questions.
Next Steps
We’ll take your feedback to
develop new IL Award questions
and continue to analyse IL abilities
of high achieving students to
further understand implications
for instruction.

32. REFERENCES
○ Bonnet, J. L., Anderson Cordell, S., Cordell, J., Duque, G. J., MacKintosh, P.J., & Peters, A. (2013). The
Apprentice Researcher: Using Undergraduate Researchers' Personal Essays to Shape Instruction
and Services. portal: Libraries and the Academy 13(1), 37-59.
○ Duke, L.M., & Asher, A.D. (2008). The Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future [CIBER
Briefing Paper]. College Libraries and Student Culture (Chicago, IL: American Library
Association, 2012), 80; CIBER. Retrieved on July 21, 2015 from:
http:// www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20140614113419/http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media
/documents/programmes/reppres/gg_final_keynote_11012008.pdf
○ Foster, N. (2014). Information Literacy and Research Practices. Ithaka S+R. Retrieved from:
http://www.sr.ithaka.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/11/SR_Briefing_Information_Literacy_Research_Practices_20141113.pdf
○ Ganley, B.J., Gilbert, A., & Rosario, D. (2013). Faculty and Student Perceptions and Behaviours Related
to Information Literacy. Journal of Information Literacy 7(2), 90.
○ Head, A. J., & Eisenberg, M. B. (2009). Lessons Learned: How College Students Seek Information in the
Digital Age. Project Information Literacy Progress Report. Retrieved on October 31, 2014 from:
http://projectinfolit.org/pdfs/PIL_Fall2009_finalv_YR1_12_2009v2.pdf
○ Head, A. J., & Eisenberg, M. B. (2010). Truth Be Told: How College Students Evaluate and Use
Information in the Digital Age. Project Information Literacy Research Reports. Retrieved on June 1,
2015 from: http://projectinfolit.org/images/pdfs/pil_fall2010_survey_fullreport1.pdf.

33. REFERENCES
○ Hensley, M. K., Shreeves, S. L., & Davis-Kahl, S. (2014). A Survey of Library Support for Formal
Undergraduate Research Programs. College & Research Libraries 75(4), 434.
○ Hofer, A. R. & Townsend, L. & Brunetti, K. (2012). Troublesome Concepts and Information Literacy:
Investigating Threshold Concepts for IL Instruction. portal: Libraries and the Academy, 12(4),
387-405.
○ Jones, J., & Canuel, R. (2013). Supporting the Dissemination of Undergraduate Research: An
Emerging Role for Academic Librarians [proceedings]. The Association of College and Research
Libraries Conference: Imagine, Innovate, Inspire. Retrieved on May 17, 2014 from:
http://www.ala.org.catalog.wblib.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/conferences/
confsandpreconfs/2013/papers/JonesCanuel_Supporting.pdf
○ Kolowich, S. (August 22, 2011). What Students Know. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved on October 24, 2014
from: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/08/22/erial_study_of_student_research_
habits_at_illinois_university_libraries_reveals_alarmingly_poor_information_literacy_and_skills.
○ Meyer, J., & Land, R. (2005). Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: Epistemological
considerations and a conceptual framework for teaching and learning. Higher Education, 49(3),
373–388.

34. THANK YOU!
Any questions?

35. CONTACT
Sophie Bury
Dana Craig
Sarah Shujah
sbury@yorku.ca
dcraig@yorku.ca
sshujah@centennialcollege.ca